Rate My Professor Hilary Dack

Hilary Dack is an Associate Professor in the Department of Middle, Secondary, and K-12 Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's Cato College of Education, serving as program director for the B.A. in Middle Grades Education. Her areas of specialization include differentiated instruction and effective instructional decision-making in K-12 general education classrooms, with current research focusing on how teacher education programs prepare preservice and early career teachers for effective instructional decision-making. Dack teaches courses on the science of learning, middle grades education, instructional design, and differentiating instruction for academically diverse learners. Before her doctoral studies, she taught social studies, language arts, science, math, and English as a second language at the middle grades level. She earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction and an M.Ed. in Gifted Education from the University of Virginia, a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law, and a B.A. in English from Davidson College. Dack regularly leads professional development workshops for elementary, middle, and high school faculties on differentiated instruction, the science of learning, and high-quality curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices.

Dack's research appears in leading journals such as Journal of Teacher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Theory and Research in Social Education, and Journal of Counseling & Development, with practitioner publications in Phi Delta Kappan and Educational Leadership. Key works include "Understanding teacher candidate misconceptions and concerns about differentiated instruction" (2019, The Teacher Educator), "Structuring teacher candidate learning about differentiated instruction through coursework" (2018, Teaching and Teacher Education), "From source to evidence? Teachers' use of historical sources in their classrooms" (2016, The Social Studies), and "Preparing novice teachers to differentiate instruction: Implications of a longitudinal study" (2025, Journal of Teacher Education). Her scholarship has received the Cato College of Education’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Award for Excellence in Research, American Educational Research Association’s Social Studies Research SIG Outstanding Paper Award, University of Virginia’s Bruce Gansneder Outstanding Dissertation Award, and Edgar F. Shannon Award. She serves on the International Editorial Advisory Board of Learning and Instruction, is president of the National Association of Professors of Middle Level Education, and has provided expertise on middle grades education to North Carolina legislators and policymakers.